Live from the Two Plus Two Studios - This week on the Pokercast: We’re back! To begin the guys chat about why we couldn’t get together for a show recently, the crypto downswing and Super Bowl before we get in to the news. Joe Ingram has gone public with a cheating scandal on America’s Card Room that could involve bots, superusers and collusion. Also, The World Series has introduced a shot clock to some events this summer, Elky leaves PokerStars, some High-Roller infighting and other stories are covered. We’ve also got a backlog of great tweets for 280 or less including an Uber driver that calls out Phil Hellmuth!?

Adam was 150 really the optimal weight number or is this just a case of "parkinsons law". Had the number been 160 do you think you would have plateaued at 170 and then had to cut like you are now. What about 140? would you have pushed more through the 160 plateau and then stopped at 150?

A classic 1978 study on this compared 22 lottery winners with 22 control-group members (who didn't win any money) and 29 people who were paralyzed in accidents.

In general, the lottery winners reported being happier than the people with paraplegia or quadriplegia — a 4 out of 5 versus a 2.96 out of 5. The control group averaged 3.82 out of 5, not significantly different from lottery winners. However, lottery winners reported getting the least enjoyment from what researchers called "mundane pleasures" — enjoyable aspects of everyday life like eating breakfast or talking with a friend.

Researchers were surprised that lottery winners didn't report being significantly happier than non-winners, and that the average among people who had been in accidents was above the scale's midpoint. Overall, winning the lottery didn't increase happiness as much as others thought it would, and a catastrophic accident didn't make people as unhappy as one might expect.

...

a 2008 study of Dutch lottery winners reported similar findings. Those authors found that people who earned more money reported being happier — something psychologists have found is true up to a certain income threshold— but "lottery winnings do not make households happier."

The concept at play here is called hedonic adaptation. People have been shown to return to a kind of set point of happiness after events that we assume will have a big effect on how we feel.

Also, “you’ll ultimately be about as happy as you were before” isn’t exactly a compelling arguement against taking the money, nor is “you’d be more happy if you worked hard and started a multimillion dollar business”.

It’s also worth noting, the paper considers wins of between 50k and 1million (1978 dollars), which I’m not sure would be enough for me to give up my day job for.

I’m less concerned about the hedonic adjustment (which is all well and good, but would you really be prepared to jump back in time 100 years knowing you’d be about as happy as you are now? That’s roughly analogous) or the impact of people hitting me up, the thing that would worry me would be the physchological impact of the windfall. Like, does it reveal to you the arbitrary nature of life and undermine your faith that life has meaning?

I've not been super actively playing online poker since Black Friday but I've played on and off since then on Bovada, ACR and a couple others.

I quit ACR sometime in Nov-Dec and swore I'd never deposit again, here's why. On ACR I played limit O8, stud, stud 8 and SNGs. Admittedly I never did any real research into numbers etc but the lack of showdown mucked hole cards and the low stakes involved it didn't seem worth my time and effort to probably be cast off as another rigged nutter.

The last 3 or so of my deposits and busts on ACR all felt very suspicious in the way they happened. I knew without a doubt that I was taken advantage of by both some team play and mostly what felt like what I could only describe as harvester bots. It felt very programmed, you'd win vs them at first and they would really play bad, like fold too much or make really obvious mistakes vs your up cards. Then at some point they would change to basically playing perfect to the outcome, the guy that folded too much would go crazy in a hand with something dumb like 9 high, super uncoordinated through 5th and just hit perfect runners for a straight. Before you'd knows what's up you'd be reloading in a rage to beat this dumbass and then you realize you have literally not won a showdown vs him in like 20 showdowns. That's why I quit ACR.

The only other site I've ever quit permanently because I felt like I was getting cheated was UB before Pot Ripper scandal.

The woman who won a $560 million Powerball jackpot in January can remain unnamed, a New Hampshire state judge ruled Monday, partially granting “Jane Doe’s” request for privacy while citing the harassment lottery winners sometimes face.

The full article where I found this is behind a paywall, but I'm sure similar reporting can be found elsewhere.